2003/08/11 by S. S. Xulu, Sibusiso S. Xulu, Xulu, S. S. · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0308070
PhD thesis, 98 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2003/08/11 · openalex publication_date 2003/08/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Energy-momentum is an important conserved quantity whose definition has been a focus of many investigations in general relativity. Unfortunately, there is still no generally accepted definition of energy and momentum in general relativity. Attempts aimed at finding a quantity for describing distribution of energy-momentum due to matter, non-gravitational and gravitational fields resulted in various energy-momentum complexes whose physical meaning have been questioned. The problems associated with energy-momentum complexes resulted in some researchers even abandoning the concept of energy-momentum localization in favour of the alternative concept of quasi-localization. However, quasi-local masses have their inadequacies, while the remarkable work of Virbhadra and some others, and recent results of Cooperstock and Chang \it et al. have revived an interest in various energy-momentum complexes. Hence in this work we use energy-momentum complexes to obtain the energy distributions in various space-times. We elaborate on the problem of energy localization in general relativity and use energy-momentum prescriptions of Einstein, Landau and Lifshitz, Papapetrou, Weinberg, and Møller to investigate energy distributions in various space-times. It is shown that several of these energy-momentum complexes give the same and acceptable results for a given space-time. This shows the importance of these energy-momentum complexes. Our results agree with Virbhadra's conclusion that the Einstein's energy-momentum complex is still the best tool for obtaining energy distribution in a given space-time. The Cooperstock hypothesis for energy localization in GR is also supported.